My Frozen Heart-- a Choji oneshot
by ChasingXxMemories
Summary: Choji and OC find they might be more than friends. This is written for one of my readers, Korvi.


I woke with a gasp, my heart slamming against my ribcage, like a wild animal against its cage. The images in my mind quickly faded before I could grasp them to find out just what my nightmare was about. This is how it always is. I wake in a cold sweat and can't remember what it was that scared me so damn bad. I try to go back to sleep but nothing ever happens. So I decide to get up and walk to the kitchen for something to eat. The old man was still asleep so apparently I didn't scream in my sleep this time.

I felt terrible for the man. Goka took me under his wing when my father snuck me out of my hometown, the Mist Village, one night when I was eight and brought me here to his doorstep. He didn't have to bring me in but he did it anyways. I've been living under his roof for all these years, waiting on my parents, but that night was the last I ever heard of them.

I poured myself a glass of milk and sat down at the two seater table in the corner of the room. Out the window, the sky was pitch dark and the streetlights flickered on with no one around. I sighed and sipped at my drink. The clock read 4:23 AM. I suppose I should just get up and and get ready for my meeting with the other jounin.

In ten years, my life has drastically changed. One day I'm learning to control water jutsus in my village and then that one night… _I woke from my first nightmare screaming as if someone had stabbed me in the gut. My parents didn't come running. I had glanced around and saw that the room was filled with ice. The door was frozen shut. I jumped to my feet and slammed my body against the door, trying to pry it open. I could hear my mother screaming faintly. My father was yelling something I didn't understand. Eventually the voices got closer and I could hear my father shouting out "Move out of the way Miyu!" I did as told and the door splintered into pieces. Outside my room the whole house was filled with thick shets of ice everywhere. My parents had had to fight to get here. I could also see villagers pressing themselves against our windows, trying to barge their way in. "Get her out of here! She's a threat! She's going to kill us all!" Those were only a few things the villagers screamed. My father stepped between me and the those people._

They had decided to give my parents one night and that one night we ran.

I looked at my faint reflection in the window. My hair, once jet black, now stood out stark white like snow. I gulped down my milk and stood abruptly, my heart pounding once more. I hated to see my reflection now. It was just a vicious reminder of what took away my home and my family.

I quickly got dressed in my dark burgundy tights, my purple silk slip with my leaf symbol belt, and my jounin vest. I threw my long white hair into a ponytail with my bangs falling all around my forehead. After grabbing my kunai, I was ready to go.

No one else was at the hall just yet so I slipped out onto the roof to watch the sunrise. I laid down on the bench and crossed my arms behind my head and stared up at the vast amount of stars.

"How did I know you'd be up here, huh, Miyu?" I sat up and looked out at Choji, dressed in his red jounin outfit. He smiled down at me. "May I sit?" I scooted over for him. "How are you today?"

"Just another sleepless night, Choji. You?" He dug out a bag of chips from his jacket pocket and opened it up.

"Well Ino and Shikamaru are at it again, but other than that, pretty good. Want one?" He offered me a chip. I gratefully took one. Choji rarely offered up his food. It was never a good idea to refuse him when he does decide to offer some of it.

"Thanks," I mumbled with my mouth full.

"So, what's on your troubled mind?" He said softly as others started to file up onto the roof for the meeting. I looked over to my friend and saw that he was gazing straight into my eyes. "You can talk to me, Miyu." So I told him.

"I always knew the Mist Village was no good!" Choji growled after I finished my story. He patted my shoulder and kept his hand resting there. "We'll find your parents. As for your nightmares, we will figure something out, ok?" My heart thumped in my chest as Choji talked on. He was too busy to notice that I was staring right at him, my mind on nothing but the feelings that I've been having of him lately. Choji was the first person to come talk to me when I started school here. He was the one who joined me into all the games and when the bullies wouldn't let either of us play, we went off on our own and made up our own games. He introduced me to his friends and I became part of the Leaf Village family. I couldn't thank him more. But for some reason, since we all became jounin, except for Naruto that is, every time I hung out with Choji I clammed up and got shy.

"What?" He finally noticed I was staring at him. I shook my head and smiled, my throat swollen shut.

"Ok, well it looks like the meeting is going to start." He stood up and held out a hand to me. I took it and stood with him in the crowd of our teams. Shikamaru and Ino were, not surprisingly, arguing and shoving each other for a spot in the crowd. I giggled at how cute they looked together. Choji glanced down at me, our hands still loosely gripping one another.

"Ok, jounin, we're all here today because it seems some of you have been slacking off in your work, including missions. From this moment on, we will be assigning the missions to you and you will have to have a certain number of these missions done by the end of the month. The number of required missions depends on the class of the mission itself. If you don't have the required amount by the end of the month, then you will be knocked down to lower class missions and eventually stripped of your vest. So, with that said, it's time to straighten up jounin! No more fooling around!" The fellow jounin stood down of the wall after his speech and walked back into the crowd. Another jounin stepped forward and called out the class rank missions and then the team that would be in charge of this mission. My team stepped forward as they were called. I had been grouped with a man named Utso and a woman named Katsuki a few months back but they were so advanced compared to me that I haven't really been of much help to them. They were a few years ahead of me, and the only reason I was with them was because they ran out of people my age to stick me with. I stepped forward to join my team.

"No, Miyu, you've been assigned a new squad. It's going to be the first four man squad we will have had since Team Kakashi. Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji, please step forward." I looked back at my friends and saw their smiles. They must have worked some strings in to get me with them. I was grateful. I grinned as they joined me up front. They each laid their hand on my shoulder, and I knew this was my family.

We left for our first mission a week later. I had to keep reassuring Goka that I would be fine. He packed my bags for me, and when I was about to go out the front door, he kissed my forehead. "Love ya, kiddo," he mumbled before closing the door behind me.

"You ready, Miyu?" the team met me at the front gates, each with their own bag of supplies on their backs. Choji had another bag of chips out, storing up his energy. Shikamaru had his hands behind his head and was looking up at the clouds as always. Ino walked over to me and walked with me as we went on our way to the Hidden Waterfall Village.

"So, anyway, Sakura is so going to regret ratting me out to Iruka sensei. I'm going to get her so good." Ino finished off her hour long rant about how terrible Sakura was, and I was seriously rethinking this whole idea about being in the same group as Ino. Choji came to save me before Ino started another hour long rant about how her ex-boyfriend, Kiba, won't stop trying to get back with her.

"You still alive over there with that?" Choji whispered as he tugged my arm and made up an excuse for needing me on my own. I laughed out quietly.

"Barely, my god, I did not realize how much that girl talked! You gotta keep me doing something, anything! I can see how Shika goes crazy!" Choji laughed out hysterically then quickly stopped before Ino noticed. Shika had disappeared to scout ahead, and probably to avoid being stuck with Ino again, too.

"Ok, well how about you just stay up here and talk to me?" He winked. I felt my face grow a little warm and my heart start to beat faster.

"Um, well, w-won't she come up here and join us?" Any excuse not to get clammed up in front of him.

"Nah, she doesn't really like to talk to me all that much," he shrugged and took out a map from his backpack. We studied it together to get an idea of which road to take to get to the village. I looked a little closer at the map and gasped out.

"Choji…. We have to go through my hometown…"

There was nothing that could be done to get away from this mission and to get away from this town I hadn't set foot in for ten years.

As we stepped foot off the bridge and out of the mist hiding the town, Choji reached out and clasped my hand. My breath hitched and the tears gathered in my eyes. Nothing had changed since the last memories I had of the village. People walked through the streets, going about their daily routines like nothing had ever happened.

We walked forward.

"Who goes there?" Two men stepped out with weapons held at ready. They glanced at us all, their eyes landing on me last.

"YOU!" They shouted and ran at me. I cringed and closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable. It didn't happen. I opened my eyes to see my team in front of me, their own weapons out. Shika had his hands crossed, his shadow reached out and attached to one of the men. Ino and Choji had kunai at the ready.

"We are only passing through to get to the Waterfall Village. It would be better if you just let us through," Shika stated calmly, still grasping to the man with is shadow. I glanced out around us. All the villagers had gathered, with their dark stares and vicious whispers spreading fast. Even the kids were glaring at me.

"You can pass. But the witch stays."

"No deal! Miyu stays with us," Choji shouted out to everyone. He stood directly in front of me. I grabbed on to the back of his shirt and pressed my teary face against his vest.

"Then you all die," the village leader stepped into the middle of the street in front of us. He swept his cloak off and underneath, he was armored to the teeth. He slid a katana from its scabbard and stepped forward toward us.

I remembered this man! A vision flashed against the back of my eyelids. I screamed out and threw myself out in front of my team just as a powerful wave of cold washed over me. With my eyes closed, I stuck out my hands and grasped for anything to keep me on my feet and not get swept away by whatever powerful force was hitting me. Faintly, I could hear gasps and shouts, but they soon died away by the sound of water in my ears. My whole body felt like I'd jumped into a frozen current and was being pulled out into its depths.

I opened my eyes, but it didn't do any difference because I couldn't see anything but a pure blue color. The swept up feeling got worse and eventually I just relaxed and let it take me. I let down my arms and fell in with the current. I closed my eyes and smiled.

"Miyu…Miyu, wake up!" I blinked and cracked my eyelids open. I tried to move my body but it felt cold and stiff, like I was in a block of ice or something. I looked up and saw Choji hovering above me. He wasn't looking at me anymore, he was staring out at something with wide, horrified eyes.

"What? What's wrong…?" I tried to sit up and managed to nudge my arms underneath me to hold me up. I froze.

"No…" In front of me, a wall of jagged ice rose up. The man with the katana stood frozen in the middle of it all. The villages stared on, completely silent. Slowly, one after the other started… clapping! They began to cheer and shout with joy!

"The witch saved us all! Did you see that tsunami?! That leader could never be trusted! He was trying to kill us all!" The villagers all began to shout out to each other and clap each other on the back.

Astonished, I watched everyone. Even my teammates couldn't understand what was going on.

A man came forward out of the shadows. He touched the wall of ice and suddenly it turned to harmless water and showered down like rain on all of us. The leader with the katana fell to his knees, gasping for air and shivering to the bone.

"You evil witch!" He cried out at me but the villagers spoke up first.

"You were trying to kill us all! That wave you created would have wiped us all out and you know that!" The man who evaporated the ice wall grabbed on to the leader and clasped his hands behind his back, ready to take him away. I inclined my head and squinted my eyes.

"Dad…? Daddy?!" I pushed my numb body off of the ground and stumbled forward. But the closer I got, the more my hopes were shattered. It wasn't my dad.

"I am Shinji Ran, your father's brother. Your parents were murdered by this man. It has been my duty to capture this man and turn him in. So thank you for helping me do that." He spoke so formal. he did look like my father in a way. But it seemed they were worlds away. The word, murder, seemed so foreign to me. Yet, it didn't surprise me. I knew, deep down, that the only reason they didn't come back for me was because they were gone. I nodded my head slowly, feeling the tears glide down my cheeks.

"Thank you for telling me this. Good journeys to you," I breathed out and stumbled back. Choji was just behind me, had been for this whole time. He must have followed me. He clasped onto my shoulders and pulled me to him. I hugged onto him, filling the lonely void that had been inside me this whole time. I wailed into his vest, the heavy weight finally lifting. The nightmares had all been about this. About that man. He'd been after me my whole life and now he'd be gone. It was over.

We finished our mission in due time and went on to the next ones. We beat them down faster than we ever could have on our own. Now that I knew my power, I practiced and perfected it with Kakashi sensei, who replicated it and learned about the new style himself.

After a month, we were even bumped up a class rank for being such an effective team.

After a particular mission escorting a princess to her soon to be husband, I began to think about my own feelings.

Choji, Shikamaru, Ino, and I all sat by a fire in a clearing of the woods. We roasted marshmallows and discussed our next mission. Of course, Shika and Ino began to argue and Choji and I were left to talk to each other.

"How are you doing, Miyu?" He asked delicately. I knew Choji. I knew that the only way to make any sense of how I felt would be to bring it up to him. He would never say how he felt until it was brought forward.

"Choji, I'm fine. Except… I kept getting these funny feelings when we talk. I get nervous and shy and excited all at once. What do you think that means..?" His cheeks burned red behind the swirls on his skin and he looked up at the trees.

"Um… I-I don't know!" He swallowed, refusing to look away from the leaves above our heads.

"Do you feel the same way?" He nodded without looking down. I took his hand and he finally caught my eye. Before I could back down, I leaned up and kissed his lips. It wasn't the perfect kiss, but it did the job. His eyes widened and his cheeks burned ferociously red. He leaned down, pressed his hand gently on the back of my head and kissed me with his soft lips. This was the perfect kiss I was waiting for. I kissed him back eagerly.

Shikamaru whistled in the background and Ino giggled loudly. We pulled away and glanced out at our teammates with sheepish smiles.

"Go Choji!" They both called out simultaneously, for once agreeing on something. They looked at each other and glared.

I laughed out and grabbed Choji's hand which had dropped from my neck onto my lap. I entwined our fingers and kissed the back of his palm. He stooped over and kissed my cheek sweetly. There was no need to have to say anything. We understood each other completely.

Choji pulled out a bag of chips that we shared while we joined back into the argument of our next mission.


End file.
